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Hitler's Exiles

Personal Stories of the Flight from Nazi Germany to America

By Anderson, Mark

Publishers Summary:
An extraordinary group portrait of the experiences of exiles from Hitler's Germany, told through contemporary, first-person accounts--many translated for the first time. Between 1933 and 1945, over 150,000 German-speaking refugees fled Hitler's persecution to resettle in the United States. Published to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Kristallnacht (November 9, 1998), Hitler's Exiles is a composite, firsthand account of this historic migration, focusing on the ordinary people who took this extraordinary voyage. From forgotten archives and little-known published sources, Mark M. Anderson has recaptured the voices of that perilous time. Hitler's Exiles reveals what it was like to leave everything behind, to risk the uncertainty of escape and exile, to start afresh in a country that had little interest and less need for these new exiles. The book features moving, personal stories of individuals such as Hertha Nathorff, a doctor's wife, who remembers her telephone ringing off the hook on Kristallnacht because so many of her husband's patients had suffered heart attacks; Ellen Schoenheimer, whose convoy of women and children gets bombed by the Nazis while evacuating through France; Max Korman, who recounts the harrowing tale of a month spent aboard the ship St. Louis, fleeing from Germany but not allowed to land in Cuba, Britain, or the United States; and Kate Frankenthal, a prominent doctor in Germany, who begins life anew in New York as an ice cream vendor. The book also includes reflections by famous intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, and Bertolt Brecht, who offer a trenchant and bitter look at the life of exiles in Hollywood. Hitler's Exiles is a moving human document and a new classic of the literature of exile and persecution.

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ISBN

978-1-56584-394-3

Publisher

New Press